The city of Durango suffered a legal setback Wednesday after a judge ruled against the city on a motion that would have forced La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith to accept municipal inmates in the county jail.

During a three-hour hearing before 6th Judicial District Judge Suzanne Carlson, attorneys for the city and the county sparred over the sheriff’s authority to reject municipal inmates and the consequences of doing so.

In relatively brief remarks, Carlson said requiring the sheriff to accept municipal offenders, as the city had requested, would undermine the authority of the Board of County Commissioners.

At the conclusion of the hearing on a temporary restraining order, she left the door open to the possibility that a stronger case could be made at trial. However, City Attorney Mark Morgan, who argued the case on the city’s behalf, indicated the city may have a stronger case pursuing another legal strategy outlined in a separate lawsuit against the BOCC.

Smith was the only named defendant in the lawsuit heard Wednesday.

The hearing illuminated in the clearest terms yet the disparate perspectives of the two governments in an issue that dates back to August.

That is when Smith informed the city he would no longer accept municipal inmates – those charged only with violating city of Durango code, versus state laws – citing capacity and liability concerns.

As the jail population lowered, Smith continued to accept municipal inmates until the Board of County Commissioners canceled a 1994 intergovernmental agreement with the city, effective Dec. 26.

Negotiations for a new IGA were ongoing at the time, but could not be finalized before the 1994 IGA was canceled.

The inmates in question are largely low-level offenders charged with trespass, disorderly conduct or similar offenses under the city code. The city would rather those inmates work through the municipal justice system, which is less cumbersome and, it argues, better tied into the kinds of services offenders need to break the cycle of crime.

The ability to use the jail is critical, Municipal Judge Matt Margeson testified Wednesday, because people who are cited often don’t show up for court. When they do, police officers need to be able to arrest them on a bench warrant for failure to appear to get offenders into the system and onto the right path.

“If we can’t get them into court in the first place, I can’t get ’em in the program,” he told the court.

Part of the harm the community would suffer if the injunction were not ordered, city witnesses testified, was that people could die of exposure, like a homeless man did in 2023.

In a line of questioning that seemed to cut at one of the county’s core concerns, Deputy County Attorney Mark Thomas and Margeson seemed to agree that fewer people would die from exposure if they were in jail, essentially accusing the city of using the jail as a homeless shelter.

However, Margeson pushed back against that concept, arguing that he needs to use the jail for the municipal court to function.

The legal argument presented by the city – that a state statute compels the sheriff to house inmates as directed by a judge, and conflicts with another that gives the BOCC the power to manage discretionary contracts for use of the jail – did not resonate with Carlson.

And the argument that the city is irreparably harmed by not having a municipal court that achieves the goals of city council – something it did not have for many years but recently rebuilt – fell flat as well.

“I think there’s potentially harm to the city in not being able to house these individuals – many unhoused individuals obtain compliance in the city court – but I’m just not getting to where its irreparable,” Carlson said.

In an interview after the hearing, City Attorney Morgan indicated that the city’s best chances in court may lie with another lawsuit filed against the BOCC, rather than with the pursuit of this one.

“That’s why we filed the second suit, in the event that this happened; we may just pursue our second suit, which is that they’re not reasonably negotiating with us and they’re unreasonably denying us access to jail and they’re unreasonably trying to push statutory liability to run the jail onto the city,” he said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com

This story has been updated to clarify that Durango’s municipal court never ceased operations, but did not achieve the desired outcomes for a period of time before it was overhauled in 2024.